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One Front Door

The whole picture for the whole family

Family members and their vulnerabilities interconnect. People do not operate in silos and neither should we.

A mental health worker supporting a vulnerable woman should know if there is domestic abuse in the household. A child safeguarding team should be aware of substance misuse at home. Without knowing about the whole family and the issues affecting them, how can we fully support them?

If information is not shared, we deal with one person, and one concern at a time – through different professionals with different agendas. We are missing opportunities to help and lives are being put unnecessarily at risk.

But if we work together, and build a picture of each family that reflects how people actually live their lives – we can help people earlier, and more effectively

The One Front Door model

The One Front Door model aims to overcome this problem. It is our vision for a transformation of local systems, processes and responses so that they start making vital links between the needs of individuals and the families they belong to.

One Front Door will facilitate earlier intervention and swifter, pre-emptive action by a multi-agency specialist team who will identify the needs and risks to all family members at the same time.

The first stage of One Front Door model is known as Sooner the Better and will focus on bringing two elements together: child safeguarding and domestic abuse.

SafeLives will be working with seven local authorities across England to pilot this mode, helping to make it sustainable and effective.

The seven sites we will be working with are:

West Sussex

Suffolk

Bexley

St Helens

North Tyneside

Norfolk

North Somerset

The Sooner the Better pilot stage of One Front Door has been made possible through a donation of £1m from the Government’s Tampon Tax fund. Women’s Aid also received £1m from the same fund and will be testing their interventions in different locations across England.

By March 2020, we aim to have designed an approach to effective early intervention for the whole family, which can then be replicated across the country.